NEW DELHI: The gov­ern­ment will con­struct 44 strate­gic roads along the bor­der with China and over 2100 km of ax­ial and lat­eral roads in Pun­jab and Ra­jasthan, abut­ting Pak­istan, a CPWD doc­u­ment shows.

Ac­cord­ing to an an­nual re­port (201819) pre­pared, and re­leased ear­lier this month by the Cen­tral Pub­lic Works De­part­ment, the agency has been asked to con­struct 44 “strate­gi­cally im­por­tant” roads along the In­dia-china bor­der to en­sure quick mo­bil­i­sa­tion of troops in case of a con­flict.

The nearly 4000-km-long Line of Ac­tual Con­trol be­tween In­dia and China touches ar­eas from Jammu and Kash­mir to Arunachal Pradesh.

The re­port comes at a time China is giv­ing a pri­or­ity to projects along its In­dia bor­ders. Last year, In­dian and Chi­nese troops en­gaged in a face-off at the Dok­lam tri-junc­tion af­ter the neigh­bour­ing coun­try had be­gun build­ing road in the area.

The stand­off ended on Au­gust 28 fol­low­ing a mu­tual agree­ment un­der which China stopped the con­struc­tion of the road and In­dia with­drew its troops.

The re­port stated that these 44 strate­gi­cally road along the In­dia-china bor­der will be con­structed at a cost of nearly Rs 21,000 crore.

“The CPWD has been en­trusted with con­struc­tion of 44 strate­gi­cally im­por­tant roads along the Indo-china Bor­der span­ning 5 states of J&K, Hi­machal Pradesh, Ut­tarak­hand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh,” the re­port stated.

“The to­tal Cost of work as per DPRS (De­tailed Project Re­ports) is Rs 21,040 crores (ap­prox.),” the re­port stated.

It said the process of ap­proval of DPRS by the Cabi­net Com­mit­tee on Se­cu­rity (CCS), headed by Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi, is un­der­way.

The CPWD re­port also stated that lat­eral and ax­ial roads mea­sur­ing over 2,100 kilo­me­ters will be built with a cost of around Rs 5,400 crore in Ra­jasthan and Pun­jab along the Indo-pak­istan bor­der.

The DPRS for this project are un­der prepa­ra­tion in CPWD, which is a ma­jor con­struc­tion agency of the cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

The road projects will se­cure the vast and re­mote bor­der ar­eas of Ra­jasthan and Pun­jab, it stated. In­dia’s bor­der with Pak­istan runs through four states, Jammu and Kash­mir (1,225 km, which in­cludes 740 km of Line of Con­trol), Ra­jasthan (1,037 km), Pun­jab (553 km) and Gu­jarat (508 km).